2015 Shamrock Regatta

This year’s Shamrock was held at the Riverton Yacht Club in Riverton, NJ. RYC is celebrating 150 years of racing. The club is the oldest Yacht Club in New Jersey and one of the oldest yacht clubs in the country in continuous operation since 1865. The Club also shares the West Jersey RC Laser Fleet with Cooper River Yacht Club. The weather for this one day regatta was beautiful, with temperatures in the mid seventies. The wind was nonexistent in the in the morning so the fifteen skippers had a chance to relax on the club’s upper deck until after lunch.

The racing started about 12:30pm and continued until the scheduled conclusion at 3:30pm. The Delaware River is tidal and at times requires some patience and a little more skill to sail. It was a good learning session for some of the group. After the first four races Ryan Lippincott had a commanding lead with two firsts and two seconds giving him six points, the next closest was Bill Ewing with 19 points. The next four races saw many changes in the standing with some skippers retiring due to the concentration level to sail in the river current and the constantly building and dropping winds. One extremely experienced RC skipper frustratingly said “this is driving me crazy”. Sailing started the day with A sails then around the fifth race some skippers changed to B sails. That may have been the wrong move as the wind again lightened, and the places changed at every race.

Jim Flach, West Jersey Fleet captain who sat out the regatta to be on the race committee along with race director Jim Greenfield worked hard to keep the races moving and the course fair for all skippers. After going over the results there was a definite pattern to the top placing skippers. Ryan Lippincott grew up sailing at RYC, Dave Branning raced comets at Riverton, Nick Mortgu Past Commodore at Riverton, Harry Mote raced Dusters at Riverton, and Ray Szulczewski Past Commodore at Riverton. So it’s fair to say that the top boats had the local advantage. Special congrats to Ray Szulczewski, who won his first RC Laser Class award.

Race winners were Ryan Lippincott 2, Dave Branning 2, Nick Mortgu 2, Dave Brawner 1, Bill Ewing 1.

The entire fleet thanks Jim Flach and Jim Greenfield for putting on this regatta.

RESULTS
Place Skipper Points
1 Ryan Lippincott 20
2 Dave Branning 20
3 Nick Motgu 28
4 Harry Mote 42
5 Ray Szulczewski 44
6 Mike Campbell 46
7 Ivor Walton 47
8 Victor Oberg 50
9 Bill Ewing 53
10 Roger Baldwin 53
11 Dave Brawner 67
12 Terry Rapp 72
13 Joe Paradine 83
14 Skip Hall 102
15 Hank Buchanan 104